[ Mexico's Cantarell field, the second highest oil-producing field in the world, has begun a premature decline, signaling an imminent peak of overall Mexican oil production. Khebab of GraphOilogy here demonstrates, with a quite technical analysis, what this will likely mean for oil exports from a country with a growing population and appetite for oil. -AF ]

Note: This post is the third in the same topic, previous posts were the following:

The production profile is taken from BP Statistical Review of World Energy (june 2005) and completed for years prior to 1965 by using the ASPO graph shown on Figure 1. (Note: I'm not sure that this production profile includes all liquids).

In order to model future production, I applied the SBM-PF method and the Hubbert Linearization technique. The results are shown on Figure 3 and 4. Both methods give similar result for the future production profile which is predicted to decline from 2006 with a decline rate between 7% and 8%.

Fig 3. Future production based on the SBM-PF method and the Hubbert Linearization technique (see Figure 4). Both methods give an URR around 72 Gb. Production is peaking in 2005-2006.

The domestic oil consumption has grown rapidly but is showing signs of a slow down since 2000 (see Figure 5). Note also that retail prices for Diesel and super-gasoline have increased since 2000 (see Figure 6).

Fig 6. Green Benchmark Line = Retail Fuel Prices in the UNITED STATES. Red Benchmark Line = CRUDE OIL Prices on World Market ("Brent" at Rotterdam)[3]

The annual population growth rate is about 1.9% [1]. The population was 107.0 million in mid-2005 and is expected to reach 129.4 million in 2025 (Population Reference Bureau). If we divide the oil consumption by the population numbers, we can see that the oil consumption seems to have reach a ceiling since the 90s at about 6.5 barrel/capita/year (Figure 8).

Based on a constant consumption per capita (blue dotted line on Figure 8) we predict Mexico's future oil consumption based on the UN population forecast shown on Figure 7. The result is shown on Figure 9 for the three population model variants. The oil production forecast for Mexico was derived from the SBM-PF model. We can observe that the oil exports are expected to go down by 2006-2007. The fraction of oil exports may fall below 40% after 2015 (Figure 10) and the US could lose an important and reliable source of oil imports (92% of Mexico's exports are for the US).

Fig 9. Projected oil consumption based on the population growth and a constant consumption per capita per year (6.5 barrels/capita/year).

Fig 10. Projected share of the oil exports for the different population scenario. The export share will reach a maximum between 2006 and 2007.

Editor's NotesKhebab has a Masters Degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in signal processing. He is currently a researcher in a computer vision lab in Quebec, Canada, with ten years experience in R&D.
See more of his work at graphoilogy.blogspot.com